Description
The imposition in 1695 of a new tax on births, marriages and deaths, in support of England’s contribution to the Nine Years’ War, led to the creation of a full register of the population of London [as of other counties]. The first of these two volumes is an index to the names recorded in the assessments in eighty of the ninety-seven parishes within the walls. The second volume provides an index to the surviving manuscript assessments for the city’s thirteen extramural parishes. Together, these records offer an unequalled level of information on social and family structures, enumerating in particular entire households by name and status, including children, bachelors, childless widowers, servants and lodgers. They constitute, in fact if not in name, the first census of London inhabitants.